Food

Don’t worry, I’ve not become a mummy blagger – I’ve not sold my soul for some Duplo or a free holiday. But I have been given a ton of free drinks to experiment on my children with and tell you if they survived, went mental for a bit, or were merely hydrated in a fruity manner.

The Gerber juice company has launched a range of fruit drinks and squashes with Lazy Town branding. Lazy Town, but that’s not on CBeebies these days? Well perhaps it’s on one of those channels that the lower orders use to babysit their children while having a fag, I suppose it breaks up the monotony of Ben10 episodes and adverts for cheap plastic tat.

Some of you may be wondering what Lazy Town is? It’s an Icelandic blend of puppets, preaching, homo eroticism, jail bait and thinly veiled propaganda for the fruit production industry.

The Channel Four programme Bringing Up Baby (open in a new window/tab) has been a real hit in our household, bringing much merriment for four weeks here to our family.

The show featured several families all trying to look after their newborn babies following one of three childcare philosophies. These were the 1960s “mummy knows best” approach of Doctor Benjamin Spock, a 1950s strict routine method and a strange 1970s hippy approach based on some tribe in the arse-end of nowhere.

I should first explain our own philosophy on childcare before I share with you our views on the TV show. Looking after twins is hard work and Patrick and Kitty do keep us rushed off our feet, the only way we really manage to cope is by sticking as much as possible to a routine. This means meals at eight am, midday, four pm and seven pm – and now the babes sleep through every single night.

This process took time though – time for us to learn what was best and time for the twins to show us what was comfortable for them. Neither Jo or I are fans of Gina Ford’s Das Kinder Reich view of childcare – we like to choose when we’ll have a cup of tea and a biscuit thanks very much, but that’s not stopped us admiring the 1950s approach in the TV show – which differs from Ford’s in that it doesn’t seem to control the parents.

The Goblin Meat Pudding sounds like something Gollum would buy down at Crazy Saruman’s Convenience & Liquor Store. But behind the silly name lurks a meal fit for a king.

For the last two weeks every weekday lunchtime I’ve sat down to a couple of Goblin Meat Puddings, made by Simpsons Foods of Manchester. I’ve been eating these things since I was a kid and the gorgeous L recently ordered 20 (yes 20) of them in an online grocery order because she knows I like them.

This lunchtime I have eaten the last of them. So it’s goodbye to the tasty soft pastry for a while and I’ll have to eat something more healthy instead. But I just wanted to pay tribute to one of the finest foods available, and easy to cook too, taking just 90 seconds in the microwave.

I’ve not eaten one of these things for ages until L bought me some and the can has certainly changed and is more attractive. The problem with the old one was that it was a bit of a lottery whether you opened it at the right end. So you’d end up having to open up both and pushing the pudding out. Now with it’s handy grenade style packaging, pudding opening confusion is a thing of the past.

But all waffling and silliness aside, the Goblin Meat Pudding really is the lunch of champions, albeit slightly porkie champions.